The Encyclopedia of the Dead (Serbo-Croatian: Enciklopedija mrtvih) is a collection of nine stories by Yugoslav author Danilo Kiš.

Combining history and fiction in what critics have seen as a postmodern fashion, the stories (which have been compared to the work of Jorge Luis Borges) have helped cement Kiš's legacy as one of the most important 20th-century Yugoslav authors.

As in his other works, in The Encyclopedia Kiš attempts to "piece together the hybrid identity of the Balkans"; his effort "is mediated through contradictory strategies (documentary, myth, imaginary projection, metafictional allusions and references) that cannot provide narrative coherences or certitudes".

[10] Less positive is German poet and translator Michael Hofmann, who in a 1989 review in The Times Literary Supplement called Kiš "a highly deliberate and self-conscious author of vaguely Pyrrhic books" and finds "terrible cliches" and predictable outlines in the stories.

[11] Major themes in the text are: death, truth, being, archiving and the role of the archivist, religion, myth, storytelling, literature, language, reckoning of the human condition, the human experience, indifference to history, illusion, surveillance, deception, the creation and questioning of an objective reality, truth verses knowledge, the cartography of knowledge, appearance verses substance, culture as a filter of truth, man's ability to distort and manipulate history, positions of power, irony, the meaning of human experience and suffering, subjectivity of morality, the history of ideas, lineage and personal histories.